Updated 6:25 pm, Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Now that Sugar Land City Council has voted to form a traffic safety task force to study the effectiveness of the city's red-light camera program, red-light camera opponents are contemplating their next move.

City council members OK'd the task force after area residents Helwig F. Van Der Grinten and Ray Patel submitted a petition with approximately 3,300 signatures to allow voters to decide whether to continue the city's red-light camera program.

After reviewing the petition, submitted April 19, City Secretary Glenda Gundermann said the petition had the required number of signatures to prompt a city response, but said the document itself was invalid because the signatures were improperly obtained.

After the city secretary's report was submitted to city council on June 4, City Manager Allen Bogard recommended creating an independent citizen task force to study the effectiveness of the red-light cameras.

Council approved forming a task force June 18.

"City council was very concerned there was a large number of people concerned about the red-light camera program," Sugar Land spokesman Doug Adolph said. "The way city council decided to address that was to form a task force."

The 11-member task force is expected to be appointed by council members July 16.

The group will work for about 120 days to develop a recommendation, which could include eliminating the city's red-light program. It also could recommend modifying the program or continuing the program as it is.

The task force's meetings will be open to the public, and comments will be accepted. "Obviously, a large part of their work will be fact-gathering and obtaining public input," Adolph said.

"I consider the formation of the task force to be wrong-headed on two counts," said Van Der Grinten, a New Territory resident and founder of Houston Coalition Against Red Light Cameras.

"It subverts the wishes of the public, which clearly wants to have a vote on this issue in the November election. It also subverts the will of the people by placing the decision in the hands of a group of hand-picked oligarchs.

"The petition itself was rejected on dubious and petty technical grounds."

The city secretary said in her report that the petition failed to meet standards based on Sugar Land's city charter: it did not contain the names and addresses of a five-member committee of petitioners; it was not accompanied by a circulator's affidavit of the person circulating the petition; a copy of the petition was not submitted to the city secretary's office within five days of the initial petition date.

Van Der Grinten said he and Patel, a Sugar Land resident, have not decided what they will do from here. "We're still studying our legal options, and we're handing out fliers encouraging petition supporters to communicate their displeasure with the city's action to their council members."

Patel had similar thoughts. "We're going to distribute fliers and tell people, 'Don't pay the red light fines'," he said. "We're not going to go away. They must bring those cameras down. They gave us dubious, petty reasons to ignore the wishes of the citizens."

"The council members seem to be accepting hook, line and sinker the claim that the red-light camera program is all about safety, and that notion is totally false. The city claims the program has reduced its accident rate by 58 percent. That claim is bogus."

Sugar Land has had a red-light camera program since 2008. The cameras operate at four intersections: U.S. 59 at Texas 6, U.S. 90A at Dairy Ashford, Eldridge Road at West Airport Boulevard and Texas 6 at Lexington Boulevard.

Sugar Land has stated that the camera program resulted in a 58 percent reduction in accidents at targeted intersections from 2009-12.

"They merely selected two years that show an accident decrease and ignored the other 3½ years of camera operations, which did not show an accident reduction," Van Der Grinten said, adding that 19 studies have been conducted that show red-light cameras overall do not improve driver safety.

Adolph said the city's reports do show a 58 percent reduction in accidents at the red-light camera sites from 2009-12. The city is required to submit a report to the state each year on the number of accidents at each intersection with a red-light camera.

"It's a very straight-forward report," Adolph said. The data speaks for itself, and it's accurate."

He added that the city was able to remove red-light cameras from two intersections between 2011-12. "We saw compliance increase there over 60 percent. That supports the effectiveness of that tool."